


…And Morning Finds My Night’s Work

by invisibledeity



Series: God Complex [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Ardyn POV, Bad Touch Chancellor, M/M, Nothing is Good, One-Sided Attraction, Possessive Behaviour, Religious overtones, a monologue of sorts, and nobody is happy, but Ardyn is creepy as fuck, except for Ardyn, flowery prose because Ardyn is Ardyn, not a romantic story, nothing is explicitly discussed, referenced rape and sexual abuse, there it is my favourite tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 16:12:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10790076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/invisibledeity/pseuds/invisibledeity
Summary: Set between the events of Auf Wiedersehen, Boy and Sugar in the Sacrament.High atop the Risorath mountains, Ardyn celebrates his little victories over Prompto.





	…And Morning Finds My Night’s Work

**Author's Note:**

> This was hard to write, which sounds crazy for just 1.5k words, but Ardyn's mind is a troubling place, hence the delay.
> 
> Ardyn's a man who has grown up in a world with highly religious overtones, and considering his role as healer in that society he'd have a pretty strong messiah complex. For him, everything he does to Prompto has multiple, deeper meanings beyond Prompto just being a tool to incite rage in Noctis, and here we get to see some of those complexities come to light.

Dawn is breaking. Somewhere across the Vesperpool, a blackbird sings like it’s the only bird left in the world.

        In a matter of hours the light of the sun will fill the valley, send soft rays through the canopy to cast dappled light on your pale skin. Now, you may have found the inner strength to drag yourself back to that glyph-riddled campsite, but be that as it may, allow me the sweet image of your body lying prone amid the forest dirt and grime, too stark, too flagrant in the light of day, the hallowed remnants of my night’s work.

        Were you scared, dragging your worn-out limbs back to camp? Did you picture the daemons finding you in your weakened state?

        There was never a reason to fear, _caro mio_. I would never have let them hurt you. That privilege isn’t theirs.

        I lick my lips, smooth my hands out over my trousers. Then I sink back down into darkness, trace my hands across the well-worn steering wheel where I wait, nestled in a parking lot at the top of the Risorath mountains, overlooking the sunken depression of the pool.

        This car now smells of you.

        Stroking my finger along the windowpane, I gaze out at the humid scenery, the early morning mist rising from ground that’s far too cold, the eggshell blush of pale light on the horizon accentuating the silhouettes of tall trees in the far field of my vision. Birch and pine and candletree. So many healing properties, each of them. Myriad ways to create a tonic for the pain of aching limbs, to dull the senses around torn skin. Ah, the things I remember. I should have left some for you, my poor torn-up thing.

        I smile.

        When was the first time that I decided it would be you?

        One might be forgiven for assuming it was back at the caravan, on that hot and sultry night before Titan’s awakening and the chaos that followed. As if my touch that night had been so spontaneous.

        And one might be forgiven for thinking it was planned from the start, from the day I instructed dear Verstael to bring you into the world. But I couldn’t be certain of your significance until I could see what the results bore, and while you weren’t the only one I commanded into existence, you were the only one that escaped. I knew that young student of Gilgamesh had taken you to Insomnia, and I let him. I let the trail run cold, just to see if your latent programming would ever awaken. For a long time, I considered you a lost cause.

        So what was the moment of revelation, then?

        It came without warning on the steps of the Royal Palace, as your dear prince bid farewell to his doomed father, as you, so full of life and vigour, flittered on the edges of the group, so hesitant to interrupt because yes, you knew your place, and yet you were so eager to lighten the mood. You clattered down those citadel steps, following your prince like a loyal dog, your golden hair glinting in the sun like it had no business shining so bright.

        But that’s okay. I do like to dim the lights.

        Perhaps this is because you reminded me of a certain young healer, the proverbial sunshine of Solheim some two thousand years past, and I know that such brightness is always cursed to fade. Perhaps I just wanted to speed you on your downward spiral. But still, I couldn’t be sure.

        And then it came. The moment I knew my foresight and planning had not been in vain.     

        Before jumping into the passenger seat, you stretched, supple bones reaching for the sky, shirt fabric riding up for a moment long enough to show delicate skin scarred like cigarette paper. Stretch marks that betrayed your inner struggles, marks that spoke to me on how the downward spiral had already started to claim you. Oh, how I wanted to add to that canvas from the moment I saw it. But the standout mark was the one that showed on your wrist as the black band slid down just an inch too far. An array of black lines across your wrist, fine like surgical needles, like spindles of tree branches, a seventh circle of hell sculpted just for you. And I realised.

        I had already staked a claim on the territory of your flesh.

        It made me shiver, your next actions. That small depression nicking the corner of your cheek, the soft downturn of your mouth, the hurried fervour of yanking your wristband back over the tattoo. The _guilt_. You knew what you were. You _felt_ things. A toy of the Empire, self-aware and self-hating. Do you ever wonder how much of your friendship with the prince was down to pre-programming? One look at that face, and I am willing to bet you do. Decades of research paid off in one simple expression. How lucky I was, having arrived so early to attend Regis’s little peace treaty. How lucky to see you, the fruit of my labour, so ripe, so ready to be plucked from the hands of the prince, and it set me burning, set me wanting. You are everything I am not, everything I once was. Have you not heard the phrase ‘Do unto others as has been done unto you?’ A bastardisation of a better, kinder phrase, but one I understand more.

        So there it lies. The drive behind my slow and unstoppable entanglement with you.

        It feels cruel to be sitting here, under cover from the early morning rain, while you suffer outside. So sweet the rain’s new fall, sunlit from heaven. I close my eyes and trace hands across the leather of these old car seats, and I think about how you looked under these low lights. The way your eyebrows angle down to meet the bridge of that thin, perfect nose. Your face is all hard edges, fine and sculpted as an MT’s should be with its near mirror-like symmetry, and yet somehow it looks soft. Your skin begs to be touched, begs for the affection you would never admit to needing out loud.

        It’s such a shame I’m not here to give you that. Kindness was never my intention, and how awful it is that you now shine so low. Happiness on a backburner but I know the instant your friends join you back at camp you’ll be presenting that cheer to them like it’s upfront and natural. Pretending to everyone.

        God, everything you do just makes it taste sweeter. My night’s triumph.

        I almost wish I had taken a photo for myself. But no matter - my parting gift to you is a revelation encoded in pixels so easy for your friends to find. Perfect mise-en-scène for what will come next.    

        The sky is lifting and now the next act begins. Cue stage-left, across the seas. I can’t help but see this as a play, because all that’s left for me is re-enactment. My memories are ancient ruins and this is just a way to work the blood from the stone. If you bleed, you’re still alive. So give me _life_ , because it’s too late for me and my blood runs black.

        I don’t know. I just want you. I want your face looking up to mine in deference. I want your body opening up beneath me. I get far too little sunshine these days, and the Six should know I deserve it.

        In the ancient scriptures of the god-kings of Solheim, there was talk of syzygy: a coupling of divine power that holds the ability to raise beings up to the level of a god. An aeon. An astral. It’s not something you can do alone.

        I want to reach the rapture that was denied to me. I don’t have to play by the rules of the Six. I can reach my own ascension, but I do need a counterpart, a sacrifice, someone to consume.

        I’ve marked you for this. Be grateful.

        The rain is calming. The breeze is lifting the heaviness in the air, I can see the way it whips the trees. I sigh, low and contented. So much time to fill before I put my next pieces into motion. Always so much time, but then I’m quite used to that. For now I’m just another weary traveller, waiting in this parking lot for the diner’s wake-up call. I’ll filter in with the others, take my morning coffee from this third-rate watering hole. The outpost is unfamiliar, but I already know how the coffee will be served; in lacklustre ceramic, the liquid bitter and black with a greasy film on top, all tepid but you can taste the beans have been burnt. It’s the taste of desperate, cobbled-together lives, the taste of existences eked out between the cracks of a dying, unworthy civilisation.

        The lights come on inside the diner, lancing through the shutters, and the sluggish, early-morning shuffle of activity begins.

        Forget Noctis, the bastard child of Lucis. He’ll serve his purpose, but he’s hardly pure.

        There now, I see the sun, rising like the first sunrise, a song of praise.

        Dawn is breaking, Prompto, and so are you.

**Author's Note:**

> I listened to The Road of Bones by IQ for this one. It's a pretty fun song.
> 
> Points if you can guess the hymn reference here.  
> More points if you spot the Divina Commedia reference, and a bonus if you can name the canto it comes from.


End file.
